


Mirror, Mirror

by Minnow_53



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Fluff and Crack, M/M, Marauders Era (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:42:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25440310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minnow_53/pseuds/Minnow_53
Summary: One magic mirror, one wicked witch, two pretty boys.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Kudos: 18





	Mirror, Mirror

**Author's Note:**

> First published on LiveJournal 26/6/05. Have to warn for some mild Dumbledore-bashing.

Once upon a time, there was a witch called Mrs Black, who was very beautiful. She had enormous grey eyes with very long dark lashes, and luxuriant, waist-length black hair. Sometimes her hair was blonde, and sometimes it was red, but it was always in excellent condition: her wand had a core of pure vanity, extremely useful for grooming charms.

One day, she gave birth to a son called Sirius. Soon afterwards, she ordered a house-elf to sew a baby robe for him. Unfortunately the elf pricked its finger and a drop of blood fell on to the white silk and ruined it. Mrs. Black was quite annoyed, and couldn’t bring herself to like Sirius an awful lot after that.

Sirius was a beautiful boy, who looked exactly like his mother, though of course not in a girly way. When he was a child, he used to be allowed to go to her dressing room and play with her discarded clothes; he loved to dress up in her velvets and satins. And every day he would watch as she sat in front of her mirror and asked it, ‘Who is the loveliest of them all?’ and the mirror answered, ‘You are, Mrs. Black.’

Mrs Black didn’t particularly notice her older son once he’d outgrown his love of women’s clothes, because he went away to school and she only saw him in the holidays. 

But she did notice when he turned sixteen, and became rebellious and unpleasant. He told her in great detail about how he wasn’t going to continue the bloodline because he preferred boys to girls, which she really, really did _not_ want to know when she was having her nails done. The magic deflected itself on to her mouth, and instead of lipstick she was covered with sticky varnish. So she was pretty pissed off with Sirius.

In fact, he totally ruined her Christmas, because one of her unvarnished nails broke, and she was so irritated that she messed up the simple charm needed to fix it. All in all, she was not a happy witch.

To make things worse, Mr Black insisted on questioning Sirius about school, and he did this at mealtimes, so even though Mrs Black hummed quietly to herself she couldn’t avoid hearing about the strange boys Sirius hung around with at Hogwarts. She wasn’t remotely interested in them, naturally, especially when she learned they weren’t Slytherins. They were from some other house, which she hadn’t been aware of when she was at school. She supposed that these were the boys Sirius was doing perverted things with. Ew. She didn’t much care, as long as she wasn’t expected to watch.

What really irked Mrs Black was Sirius’s make up. He used eyeliner and eyeshadow and a fetching little line of glitter along his high cheekbones. She wished _she’d_ thought of that: she tried it, but somehow the effect wasn’t quite right. 

Mrs Black was relieved when he finally went back to school after the holidays. She went up to her dressing room put on her best blue velvet robes, and sat in front of her mirror for a bit of well-deserved pampering; she started, as always, with the question, ‘Who is the fairest of them all?’ 

The mirror thought for a moment, than answered, ‘Your son Sirius, of course.’

Now, the mirror had a quirky sense of humour, and over the years had occasionally teased her: once, it told her that _Mr_ Black, was the fairest! They had a good laugh about that, after the mirror saw her outraged expression and crowed, ‘Only kidding, Mrs. B!’

Tonight, though, it refused to take back a word, even when Mrs Black threatened to break it. She went to bed in a temper, and would have cried herself to sleep except she didn’t want to wake up all puffy-eyed and have the stupid mirror jeer at her again.

She decided Sirius had to die. There was no way she could tolerate a world in which anyone was better looking than she was.

She immediately sent an owl to Professor Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts, demanding that he kill Sirius at once. Then, satisfied, she fell into a wonderful sleep and dreamt she was dancing with a beautiful man, though not as beautiful as she was, of course.

*

When Professor Dumbledore got the owl, he was very perturbed indeed. He thought for a while, and messed about with his Pensieve, and ate humbugs, and then sent for Sirius Black.

‘Your mother wants me to kill you,’ he informed the boy.

Sirius shrugged. ‘I’m surprised she’s taken so long about it. She always did like Regulus better. So, how are you going to do it? A quick Avada Kedavra?’

‘Nah,’ Dumbledore said. ‘That’s rather messy. Bodies to dispose of and so on. Tell you what, if you go to the Shrieking Shack at sundown on the night of the full moon, we’ll see what we can do.’

Unfortunately, Dumbledore was not aware that Sirius and his friends already knew about the werewolf who terrorised all of Hogsmeade with his howling every month. They not only knew about him, they ran with him in animal form.

In fact, the werewolf, Remus Lupin, was the boy Sirius particularly liked and who particularly liked him. So though Sirius wasn’t very happy about being given a death sentence, he thought he might quite enjoy outwitting his mother and the Headmaster. He warned Peter and James to stay away, because this was something he had to handle on his own.

On a cold January evening, Sirius duly went along to the Shack, where he encountered a nasty, slavering beast. He changed into a dog, and he and the slavering beast had some adventures in the woods; chasing rabbits, pouncing on pixies and hiding from centaurs. 

In the morning, they both changed back into boys again. Sirius told Remus all about his mother, and Remus looked blank and said, ‘Oh. Should I have eaten you, then?’ 

Sirius made a very rude suggestion, and then Remus said, ‘But seriously. Dumbledore’s going to expect you to be dead, so you’d better not show up at school. Hide in the Shack, and I’ll bring you food and pumpkin juice.’

‘And Butterbeer.’

‘Maybe I can even smuggle in a bottle of Firewhisky!’ Remus’s eyes were round as saucers and blazing with excitement. ‘And I can tell you all about lessons, and go through the work with you. It’ll be great.’

Sirius wasn’t so happy about that aspect of it, because he didn’t really fancy learning to transform objects into other objects when he could be spending quality time in bed with Remus. He was even more alarmed when Remus confided that he was also planning to do things like cleaning the shack and cooking meals, all of which were fine but not quite what Sirius had in mind.

So Sirius shut him up by kissing him, and then they kissed some more, but all too soon the school nurse, Madam Pomfrey, was knocking at the door, and it was time to part.

Sirius hid under the bed, in dog form, just to be on the safe side. He was glad he had, because instead of taking Remus straight to the hospital wing, Madam Pomfrey sat him gently down and asked if he was hungry. Luckily Remus was a quick and clever boy, because he said in an incredulous voice, ‘Hungry? Goodness, no! I must have had a feast last night. I feel as if I won’t need to eat for the next week.’

Sirius was a bit annoyed that even Madam Pomfrey was in on his mother’s plot to have him killed. But at least this meant that Remus was able to persuade her to leave him in the Shack for a while longer. ‘In case I’m sick,’ he said, and Sirius could just imagine Pomfrey shuddering at the thought of Remus throwing up disgusting remains all over the infirmary.

‘Now we’ll have lots of time to ourselves and be able to do stuff,’ Remus said, which Sirius felt was more like it than his talk of keeping house. They started at once, and Sirius decided he was going to enjoy being dead very much.

*

Sirius’s two other friends, James and Peter, were quite upset when they thought he’d been eaten, so Remus let them in to the secret, and during the following week they also visited him in the Shack, with food and porn and other goodies.

Dumbledore assumed Sirius had been eviscerated and gobbled up by the wolf, so he sent Mrs Black a cheerful owl to assure her that her wishes had been carried out.

Mrs Black was very happy. She sat in front of her mirror and combed her lovely hair, which had just a slight natural wave, so it always fell perfectly, never frizzy but not dead straight, because dead straight really is absolute hell. Her eyes were subtly ringed with kohl and looked enormous, her mouth was so kissable that even Mr Black would have found it hard to resist, and her lovely bosom heaved with passion and relief.

‘Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?’ she asked, simpering just a tiny bit.

‘Well, he isn’t technically fair, but he is gorgeous like whoa,’ said the mirror.

‘What the hell are you on about, you stupid mirror?’ snapped Mrs Black.

‘Your son Sirius,’ said the mirror. ‘Lovelier than ever. He’s experimenting with lipstick now. Just subtly, you know. And the results are to die for!’

Mrs Black bristled. ‘Excuse _me_! My lipstick charms are second to none.’

‘Not now, sweetheart. You need some practice.’

Mrs. Black then suddenly remembered that Sirius was dead. She laughed. Her laugh wasn’t very pleasant, and the mirror shuddered visibly. ‘I assume, you ignorant mirror, that you’re referring to my son’s body?’

The mirror leered. ‘Yeah, his body’s pretty good too. I prefer yours, for various reasons, but if I were into boys, he’d definitely be the one I’d choose.’

Mrs Black was incandescent with rage, and actually looked so wonderful that the mirror briefly reconsidered its verdict on who was fairest, but sadly Mrs Black didn’t think of asking it again.

She sent out a few tracker owls, and they came back and reported that Sirius was hiding out in the Shrieking Shack, in Hogsmeade.

The second she heard the news, Mrs Black sent a furious letter to Professor Dumbledore, and received a very bewildered note back. ‘ _Dear Mrs Black, I myself escorted your son to his death by wild animal at the last full moon! I cannot understand why you believe him to be alive._ ’

‘That dreadful old man! He’s totally senile!’ muttered Mrs Black, ripping up the offending parchment. 

She decided to take matters into her own hands, and very reluctantly used a reverse glamour charm that turned her into an ancient hag for the afternoon. She didn’t even want to think what she would do if she couldn’t end the spell.

*

Sirius was very happy hiding in the Shack. Because Remus was worried about him, he broke his rule about never skipping lessons and consented to miss History of Magic every week, so as to spend as long as possible with his friend. They made good use of their time together, and were more in love than ever. Though Sirius didn’t quite share Remus’s fantasies of staying there forever and ever, until the moon fell out of the sky, he was perfectly happy to go along with the sex, and the seduction charms Remus was tutoring him in.

His own daydreams were more bloodthirsty than Remus’s, of course. He intended to put his mother under an Imperius curse, and make her shave her head with an unbreakable spell, and he planned to Incendio every last scrap of her makeup, except the eyebrow pencil, which was better than his. 

When he and Remus weren’t sleeping together, he passed the time by making his Moony as beautiful as possible. Remus obediently sat on a broken and rather dangerous chair while Sirius brushed his lashes with mascara, which made his eyes look even bigger and wider, and smoothed foundation over his pale skin. 

‘If I ever get out of here, Moony, I’m going to open my own magical beauty salon,’ Sirius confided, patting blusher delicately over Remus’s cheekbones. ‘You can be manager.’

Remus almost toppled over on his precarious chair. ‘Me? How could I manage a beauty salon?’

‘You do Arithmancy, don’t you? We could branch out into hairdressing as well. You know how you love messing with hair.’

‘With _your_ hair.’

‘Which reminds me. Could you do it for me when I’ve finished your makeup? You can wash it the Muggle way. I love that.’

So Remus shampooed and dried and brushed Sirius’s hair, and after that they simply couldn’t resist each other’s beauty, and went to bed and smudged all the careful makeup and mussed Sirius’s immaculate hair, but they weren’t like Mrs Black so they didn’t mind in the slightest. Well, not too much.

They were just getting dressed again, when there was a knock on the door. ‘That’ll be Prongs,’ said Sirius cheerfully, and he flung it wide open, only to see an ancient hag standing there with a very pretty light blue comb.

‘Hey, thanks, mate,’ said Sirius taking it. ‘Just what I needed! You’d never believe Moony did my hair earlier, would you? Just look at it now! I love your disguise, by the way. The image of my mother!’ He sniggered.

He was so excited combing his hair with the pretty comb, that he didn’t notice the hag Disapparating into the distance: which she could do, because she’d come to the Shack via its Hogsmeade door.

As soon as the teeth of the comb reached down to Sirius’s scalp – which took a while, because his hair was so thick and heavy – he fell to the ground, unconscious.

‘Hey, Padfoot,’ cried Remus, alarmed, ‘you have that comb caught in your hair.’ He gently disentangled it, and Sirius immediately sat up, looking pale and bewildered. 

‘Why would Prongs put a jinx on a comb?’ he asked.

‘That hag. Maybe it wasn’t Prongs. She disappeared fast enough,’ Remus said.

‘Oh, Merlin, it really _was_ my bloody mother!’ groaned Sirius. ‘She’s found out I’m still alive, and she’s trying to kill me again.’

Remus, who was very shaken, said, ‘You’re not to open the door to anyone again, okay? If it’s us, we’ll come via the Willow, so you’ll know.’

‘Yes, I did think it was a bit weird, Prongs being in the village and all,’ said Sirius. ‘I thought maybe he’d dropped into Gladrags and got the comb for me. Shame about that. D’you think we could just take the spell off or something?’

‘No!’ shouted Remus, alarmed. ‘Evanesco, comb!’

The comb dutifully disappeared in a flash of blue plastic light. Sirius fished out his old green one, but it really wasn’t as good as the jinxed one, so he sulked. Remus led him back to the bathroom, and put his head under the shower to wash his hair again, just in case there was any residual dark magic there; Sirius was greatly soothed by the time Remus had finished rinsing the conditioner off with warm water. 

All the same, he was still grumbling about the old green comb, so they threw it ceremonially in the bin and Remus promised him a new one. He then used a nice, soft hairbrush to make Sirius look really gorgeous, to both their satisfaction. Sirius then showed Remus exactly how to get the most from curling charms, so his hair looked wonderful as well. In spite of Mrs Black, it was a good afternoon. 

*

The following day, Sirius was all alone. Remus had gone off very early to Transfiguration, without making any breakfast, and he was hungry, prowling about for food in the very basic kitchen.

As if in answer to his prayers, he looked out of the window and saw an old woman with a huge tray of apples slung round her neck. He opened it and called out, ‘Hey, old woman, can you sell me an apple please?’

‘Certainly,’ said the old woman, and brought her wares to the window for Sirius to examine. 

He wrinkled his nose. Close-up, the apples were nasty and shrivelled, with soft brown bits: all except one, which was big and red and juicy and no doubt extremely sweet. Sirius pounced on it. ‘I’ll have that one. How much do I owe you?’

‘A Galleon,’ said the old woman.

Sirius was dismayed. ‘Bloody hell, that’s a bit steep! I don’t think I have that much.’ And he disappeared into the Shack to see if he could find a Galleon in change.

After emptying out the pockets of all his robes, he finally had enough to pay the old woman for her apple. She put the money away, without thanking him, and seemed to disappear into thin air, but Sirius didn’t notice because he was attacking the large, juicy apple.

*

When Remus arrived at the Shack after school, running ahead of James and Peter who were struggling with books and provisions, Sirius was lying lifeless on the ground, by the open window. Remus was alarmed, because it was still very cold, and he was terrified that Sirius might have been struck down by instant pneumonia.

He leaned over and took his pulse: when it became obvious that Sirius wasn’t breathing, he burst into tears and howled like the wolf. 

James and Peter heard his cries of distress, dropped what they were carrying, and came rushing to see what was going on. But even their combined spells couldn’t rouse Sirius: in the end, they laid him on the bed in the Shack, with its tatty red hangings, and Peter started mumbling things about graves and undertakers, until James told him to stuff it.

‘His hair was looking so wonderful too,’ sobbed Remus. ‘I wish we had a glass coffin to put him in, so all the world could see how beautiful he was.’

When the other two had withdrawn tactfully to leave Remus alone with his grief, he gazed down at his dead friend, and wondered whether it would be necrophiliac to kiss that gorgeous, pouting mouth one more time.

He noted that Sirius must have been experimenting with lipstick again, because he was wearing a shade that patently had too many orange tones for someone with such a pale complexion. Really, he wouldn’t want to be seen dead in that! So Remus very gently leaned down and started to lick it off.

As he did so, the chunk of poisoned apple fell out of Sirius’s mouth, and soon he and Remus were kissing and crying and making plans to go somewhere far away from Mrs Black and Professor Dumbledore.

Remus was a bit exasperated about the apple. ‘What would we have done if your lipstick had been absolutely perfect?’ he asked. ‘Really, Padfoot. And you used the last of our money.’

Fortunately, they still had their broomsticks, and that night, they sneaked into Hogsmeade with all their worldly possessions shrunk to fit into a single spotted hanky, and flew off to a better place. As they rose above the woods and shops of the village, it started to snow, and Sirius said, ‘I’ve had enough of Scotland, Moony. Let’s go somewhere warm. Somewhere the sun shines all year long.’

Unfortunately, they were both tired, and though they bore south for several hours, they didn’t have the energy to go further than the English coast: in fact, they fell asleep on a rather pebbly beach, and woke to another grey dawn, though at least it wasn’t snowing. They soon realised they'd landed in wizarding Brighton, a smart but not very fashionable resort; Mrs. Black would never think to look for them there.

They walked up to the town, and found the High Street in turmoil, with women and children weeping and wailing, and men looking brave and stoical. 

‘What’s the matter?’ Remus and Sirius asked.

‘Oh, strangers, you come to this place at a sad, sad time!’ the mayor said, clasping their hands in a firm grip. ‘The owner of the beauty parlour has absconded, and we will be ugly from now on. What are we to do?’

Sirius could hardly disguise his glee. ‘Look closely at my friend,’ he ordered, and the townsfolk crowded round Remus, bewildered and curious, staring at him and stroking his skin.

‘But…he’s wearing foundation! And blusher!’ one woman exclaimed. ‘I would never have guessed in a million years!' She turned to Sirius. 'Is this your work?'

He nodded, too overcome to speak.

'You're obviously a real expert,' the woman pronounced. 'It's the perfect look for him. And your hair,’ she added, running her hands experimentally through Sirius’s raven locks. ‘I hardly dare ask…who does it?’

Sirius smiled through his tears of joy, and pointed at Remus. 

Some of the more superstitious townsfolk fell to their knees and praised Merlin. The practical ones set to work drawing up leases, putting in orders for hairdryers, exfoliating gloves and sun beds, and generally preparing the gutted salon for business. 

So all that was ugly turned beautiful overnight, with the advent of the magical salon and hairdresser. The mayor himself christened it _Pretty Boys_ , in honour of its new owners.

They got married and set up housekeeping in the flat above their lovely new premises. They were wildly successful, of course, and their fame soon spread far beyond the town: people flocked from miles around to have makeovers there. James and Peter, and later their wives, frequented the salon regularly, and Remus and Sirius became very rich and lived happily ever after.

*

Professor Dumbledore was demoted and sent to a home for dotty old wizards. 

As for Mrs. Black, she smashed her mirror, but she wasn’t worried about the seven years’ bad luck. She simply bought a new mirror that was charmed so it couldn’t see anyone but her. It was very sycophantic, and always told her how fair and lovely she was without even being asked.

**End**


End file.
